March, 1921.] 



The Canadian Field-Naturalist. 



55 



sometimes (not always by any means, for 

 I have seen homing pigeons come home in 

 one) become lost in a fog when migrating 

 on the telaesthesia principle. Fog has a 

 very depressing influence both physically 

 and mentally, and why should it not there- 

 fore have the same effect upon subcons- 

 cious perceptions, dulling and putting 

 them out of commission for the time 

 being, just as an electric storm affects the 

 working of telephone, telegraph and wire- 

 less systems. In like manner I imagine 

 the glare from a lighthouse on a dark 

 night attracts the physical eye of the bird, 

 drawing it out of its course and for the 

 moment disrupting the psychological con- 

 nection, which cannot be regained until 

 normal conditions are re-established and 

 the bewildered bird escapes from the light 

 without losing its life, which so many do, 

 thereby never reaching the land of which 

 they had such a clear vision just before the 

 physical faculty led to a disruption of 

 the psychological connection, the same as 

 the fog does or may do in the afore-men- 

 tioned case. 



Speaking of bringing out latent facul- 

 ties in animals, I once trained a British 

 Goldfinch {Carduelis carduelis hritannica) 

 to perform some wonderful tricks, but no 

 one will ever convince me that I was bring- 

 ing out latent faculties already possessed 

 by that bird. Rather would I suggest that 

 dominant will power, as well as mesmeric 

 influence, compelled that bird to perform 

 acts which pure nature never intended it 

 should, just in the same way as the lion 

 tamer compels those noble animals to go 

 through humiliating acts, which again pure 

 nature never intended they should. Had 

 they but self-conscious reasoning minds 

 and knew their power I am afraid their 

 tamer would soon be no more. It seems 

 too sweeping a statement to say that no 

 entirely new type of mental process such 

 as reason can possibly be evolved by as- 

 sociation with man, and I am still of the 

 opinion that some of the higher animals 

 from long association with man have, 

 through his mental emanations, acquired 

 some slight reasoning powers. It has been 

 said that in such cases it is possible that 

 the discarnate spirit of the animal does not 

 return to the group-soul, but remains 

 individualized. 



To those who still hold to the theory that 

 birds are possessed of reasoning powers I 

 would suggest their reading Mr. C. W. 

 Leister's experience with a Spotted Sand- 

 piper, Bird-Lore, Vol. xxi, 1919, no. 5, pp. 

 287-289, wherein it is recorded how a 

 Spotted Sandpiper {Actitis maculana), 

 after her nest and eggs had been covered 

 over, firstl}' with a cap, secondly wdth a 

 leaf, thirdly with small sticks, and lastly 

 with a stone, in every instance sat down 

 on the top of the obstacle, and commenced 

 incubating, surely a very foolish thing for 

 a self-conscious and reasoning bird to do. 

 In this instance I would suggest that sub- 

 conscious mind brought her back time 

 after time to the exact spot where the nest 

 and eggs were, but that lack of self-cons- 

 cious or reasoning mind allowed her to sit 

 on the obstacles without ever investigating 

 or removing them, which was perfectly 

 feasible in cases two and three, and even 

 in the first was not impossible. However, 

 chacun a son gout, which also applies to 

 the answers to the following questions, 

 which appear to me to require more than 

 the /learing, sight, toudh or smell theory 

 to explain them, viz : 



1. How is it that a string of swallows 

 gathered on a telegraph wire are able to 

 leave it at one and the same instant? 



2. How do a flock of shorebirds man- 

 age to turn and twist at one and the same 

 moment, thereby avoiding collision with 

 one another? 



3. How do a pair of birds manage to 

 work in harmony whilst constructing a 

 nest? 



4. How does a bird when flushed from 

 its nest on the darkest night yet find its 

 way back? 



5. How does the larva, devoid of phy- 

 sical sight, yet manage to find its way 

 from the food plant to the necessary pup- 

 ating station, w^hich may be hundreds of 

 yards from the former? 



I would suggest that telepathy (mind 

 blending) answers Nos. 1, 2 and 3 in a 

 nutshell, and likewise telaesthesia (the 

 power of vision passing the limits of time 

 and space) the two last. That I am not 

 alone in discarding the sight or landmarks 

 theory seems evident from an article in the 

 October, 1920, number of the lUs, which 

 article was briefly reviewed in the January, 



